Processing to filter out noise of image data (hereinafter also simply referred to as “filtering”) includes temporal noise removal filtering and spatial noise removal filtering. In order to switch from one of the above noise removal filtering techniques to the other, Patent Literature (PTL) 1 discloses a technique to select the filtering result from either the temporal noise removal filtering or the spatial noise removal filtering, based on the result of motion estimation.
PTL 2 discloses a technique to output the final filtering result upon determining whether or not to employ the result of the temporal noise removal filtering based on the result of the spatial noise removal filtering.